Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Cuban officials say they will turn over to US police an American couple suspected of kidnapping their two sons from the boys' grandparents.

The announcement comes a day after US police said they had information that the family - Joshua Hakken, his wife Sharyn and their two young sons - had arrived on the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Cuban Foreign Ministry official Johana Tablada said in a written statement Cuba had informed the US of the country's decision. She did not say when the exchange would take place.

British children's prospects trail behind many of their European neighbours and current Government policies are making it worse, a UN organisation has warned.

Unicef's report on child well-being placed the UK 16th out of 29 developed countries, but it ranked much lower on key indicators including involvement in further education (29th), teenage pregnancy (27th) and youth unemployment (24th).

The children's rights organisation warned that a generation of British teenagers is being "sidelined" by the Government's austerity agenda and called for more state investment in young people.

Death sentences are "becoming a thing of the past", according to campaigners, despite at least 682 confirmed executions across the globe last year.

That is just two more executions - including beheadings, hangings and firing squads - than in 2011, according to Amnesty International.

A total of 21 countries were confirmed as having carried out executions in 2012, the same number as in 2011. Amnesty said this was significantly down from levels a decade ago, when 28 countries carried out executions in 2003.

The number of deaths sentences imposed fell from 1,923 in 63 countries in 2011 to 1,722 in 58 countries over the next 12 months.

A top State Department official met with a top representative of the North Korean government in New York in March, The Cable has learned.

Clifford Hart, the State Department's special envoy to the now-defunct six-party talks, met North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations Han Song-ryol in mid-March, just before North Korea began its latest string of provocative statements and actions, diplomatic sources said. The meeting was done through what's known in diplomatic circles as the "New York channel," the most common method of direct communication between Washington and Pyongyang.

No real progress was made during the meeting and no new offers were made by the U.S. officials present, the sources said. The U.S. side simply reiterated the administration's call for North Korea to avoid provocative actions as well as its offer for a return to diplomacy if North Korea recommitted to fulfilling its international obligations and pursuing a path of denuclearization. The North Korean side simply agreed to communicate that information back to Pyongyang.

Matt's thoughts:So essentially 1) the US held a meeting with someone it vows to have nothing to do with, without telling the American people, 2) didn't get what it wanted, and so 3) now attempts to bully them through military might.

A CNN reporter who sailed to the Cuban shore today questioned a man on a boat who said he was Josh Hakken. The woman with him fir his wife's description. He declined to answer questions however and Cuban security asked the CNN reporter to leave. There was one child visible on board the boat.

Uwazam Rze showed the Chancellor in striped pyjamas and wearing a headscarf next to the headline: 'Falsification of History: How The Germans Made Themselves The Victims of World War II.' It comes amid anger in Poland at the way resistance fighters were portrayed in a German miniseries about the war.

At least 10 gangsters armed with Kalshnikov rifles held up two armoured security vans on a motorway outside Como and escaped with €10m (£8.5m) in gold and cash.

In what Italian media described as a "paramilitary action", robbers blocked in the Gruppo Battistolli security vans by sealing off both ends of a stretch of the A9 highway between Saronno and Turate with two abandoned lorries. The A9 connects Milan to the Swiss city of Chiasso.

Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, gang members opened fire on the vans and the security escort fired back but the occupants of one vehicle were forced out on to the roadside by a smoke bomb.

Robbers broke open the vehicle with a shovel that was later found at the scene. Investigators also found at least 50 bullet casings although there were no injuries.

Helmut Kohl has admitted that he 'acted like a dictator' to bring the euro into Germany to replace the beloved D-Mark.

Germany's longest-serving postwar chancellor said that he would have lost any popular vote on the euro by 'an overwhelming majority'.

He said in an interview conducted in 2002 - but only just now published - : 'I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany. We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That's quite clear. I would have lost and by seven to three.'

The interview was conducted by Jens Peter Paul in 2002 when the Deutsche Mark was subsituted by the euro.

What he did NOT address in his interview were the lies he and his ministers told to get the common currency in place across Europe - a decision now seen to have fatal consequences as the continent thrashes around in the sixth year of a financial crisis without end.

Hundreds of pages of German government documents from 1994 to 1998 and released last year stated clearly that Italy - now one of the floundering southern European euro states - should NOT have been allowed to join the euroclub. Later on the files bring up another country that was poised for catastrophe: Greece.

German media dubbed the information in the files as 'Operation Self Deception.' The German ruling class seemingly knew they were driving the continent into a fiscal cul-de-sac... but went ahead with it anyway.

Police have made an arrest in a suspected stabbing attack that has injured up to 14 people at a Texas college campus.

Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Alan Berntstein said authorities have a suspect in custody following a Tuesday morning attack at the Lone Star Community College system campus in Cypress, a suburb of Houston.

Sheriff's department spokesman Tom Gilliland said at least 11 people had been injured by a single suspect who ran from classroom to classroom. He said four critically injured victims were transported to hospital by helicopter.

Police were unable to immediately say what kind of weapon was used. Some reports said the suspect used a knife to stab victims, while other witness reports said a pencil was used.

Police have made an arrest in a suspected stabbing attack that has injured up to 14 people at a Texas college campus.

Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Alan Berntstein said authorities have a suspect in custody following a Tuesday morning attack at the Lone Star Community College system campus in Cypress, a suburb of Houston.

The school remains on lockdown.

The sheriff's department said at least 11 people had been injured by a single suspect who ran from classroom to classroom. Police said four critically injured victims were transported to hospital by helicopter.

Police have made an arrest in a suspected stabbing attack that has injured at least five people at a Texas college campus.

Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Alan Berntstein said authorities have a suspect in custody following a Tuesday morning attack at the Lone Star Community College system campus in Cypress, a suburb of Houston.

He did not say how many people were injured or comment on their conditions.

The worrying warning came as speculation heightened that North Korea is planning to pull its ambassador out of the UK after a shipping container was pictured outside the London embassy.

Boxes were seen being loaded onto a large lorry parked outside the pariah state's embassy - an ordinary home in Ealing, west London.Seoul revealed today that foreign nationals in South Korea were told by the North to evacuate in case of a "merciless" war.
"We do not wish harm on foreigners in South Korea should there be a war," said the KCNA news agency, citing its Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee.

A powerful earthquake struck close to Iran's only nuclear power station on Tuesday, killing 30 people and injuring 800 as it devastated small villages, state media reported.

The 6.3 magnitude quake totally destroyed one village, a Red Crescent official told the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), but the nearby Bushehr nuclear plant was undamaged, according to a local politician and the Russian company that built it.

"Up until now the earthquake has left behind 30 dead and 800 injured," said Fereydoun Hassanvand, the governor of Bushehr province, according to ISNA.

China has earned praise from international scientists for its handling of an outbreak of a deadly new bird flu in humans, but a history of public health cover-ups means the Chinese public is harder to win over.

Even as global authorities have said the new H7N9 bird flu strain that has killed eight and infected 28 is no cause for panic, memories of past health scandals continue to undermine the government's credibility at home in dealing with outbreaks.

Those suspicions have driven anxiety about the human cases in eastern China, and put the government's response under the microscope as much as the bird flu virus itself.

TV weatherman Fred Talbot has been arrested by police investigating historic sexual abuse at a school where he taught.

The 63-year-old is being held on suspicion of three counts of indecent assault and four counts of inciting a child to commit acts of gross indecency.

The alleged offences relate to his time as a biology teacher at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys in Trafford, Greater Manchester, between the early 1970s to early 1980s, where four alleged victims were pupils.